- Venue
- Hundred Years Gallery, Hoxton
- Location
- London
Tucked away in Hoxton and close to the Greffye Museum lies the Hundred Years Gallery, an art space supporting young, experimental and unrepresented artists.
Their current exhibition,“Bell from the Deep”, is dedicated to drawings and prints from eight artists of various nationalities and is the result of an open call and implication of the public in the final choice of exhibitors.
The drawing practices represented are wide ranging, from the miniature drawings and illuminations of Neville Sattentau to the scroll-like object of Sisetta Zappone, from the etchings of Thomas Moore and Max Middleton to the drawings on paper or board of Helen Bermingham, Anna Jung Seo, Gianluca Bonomo and Pippa Tideman. However they all share a sense of Freud’s unconscious and “Unheimlich” where the familiar becomes strange and uncomfortable. They all belong to the register of dreams and nightmares.
Out of all these talented artists, several grasped my imagination. Helen Bermingham is one of them. With her delicate partially erased faceless drawings of family members, she reinvents uncomfortable narratives out of faded memories. Gianluca Bonomo is another with his CCTVYLLE drawings: strange hybrid birds with heads or eyes replaced by cameras or CCTVs are both strangely sci-fi and prophetic. They somehow reflect our fears of a world where we are ever more under constant surveillance. I was particularly captivated by a drawing of a flock of bird-like cameras (“Flock”) swarming towards the viewer and reminding of the terrifying Hitchcock’s film “The Birds”. As for Max Middleton’s and Thomas Moore’s etchings, they both echo Goya’s etchings, where pain, chaos and fear are palpable under the surface.
The exhibition runs until the 14th of February 2016. Hundred Years Gallery runs various open calls throughout the year and artists can submit proposals for use of their gallery space. Check their website on www.hundredyearsgallery.com for more information.
Antonia Jackson
